Publisher's Synopsis
The Old English epic poem Beowulf has an established reputation as a canonical text. And yet the original poem has remained inaccessible to all but experienced scholars of Old English. This book aims to present the poem to readers who want to know what makes it such a remarkable work of art, and why it is of such cultural significance.
Most readers will only have encountered the poem through one of its many translations or adaptations; others have had to take it on as a translation exercise, a unique and challenging survivor from a long-gone era. This book sidesteps academic debates about the poem’s unknowns – its date, provenance or author – and focusses instead on its poetic artistry, its interleaving of heroic pasts and Christian present, and its poet’s extraordinary breadth of reference, from biblical history to Old Norse myth. The strange intricacies of Old English metre and poetic language are explained, and the poet’s evocation of the ethics and material world of an imagined pre-Viking Scandinavia is explored.
Beowulf: Poem, Poet and Hero follows the story of the poem through its many interwoven voices from different times and places, and the poem emerges as a work of reflective beauty, its human characters full of touching pathos and wisdom, its notorious monsters still speaking to our own societies’ abiding insecurities. The final section, on post-medieval responses to Beowulf, shows how the poem has been taken up as a European cultural icon. This book restores its status as a literary masterpiece.
"Heather O'Donoghue has done a great service to Beowulf, confidently navigating ongoing debates about authorship, date, provenance and structure to produce a highly readable, accessible and original vision of the poet as a learned synthesizer of biblical story, Norse myth and Scandinavian royal legend. This book provides an invaluable introduction to the most famous Old English poem, and will be essential reading for students and scholars alike." - Francis Leneghan, Professor of Old English, University of Oxford, UK
